One of the roles of the MIC is to ensure that adequate attention and time are give to diversity issues at the Texas Association of Museums Annual Meetings. This summer, the MIC submitted four session proposals for the 2010 meeting. I am pleased to announce that two of them have been accepted in their entirety. These are titled "Opening Doors to Inclusiveness" and "Out of the Closet: A Community History Comes to Light." Unfortunately, the other two sessions did not make the cut. Considering that the program committee has the tough task of narrowing the proposals submitted to about half, we are fortunate that half of our submitted sessions were selected.
If you are planning to attend the 2010 TAM Annual Meeting in College Station, be on the lookout for these and other great sessions!
As more details are released about the annual meeting and the sessions, we will update the blog.
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Diversity Sessions Featured at 2010 TAM Annual Meeting
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Museums take on immigration debate with exhibits
This very intersting article about the role of museums in the immigration debate is from the Chicago Tribune
By SOPHIA TAREEN Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO - With little progress on Immigration reform among lawmakers, the nationwide debate has entered a new space: museums. A network of U.S. museums launched a program Wednesday in Chicago that aims to grapple with tough questions on Immigration, including who should have access to health care, how borders should be controlled, and issues of citizenship and identity. The idea is to get leaders and activists talking to each other in locations connected to history to figure out how to achieve reform, said Liz Sevcenko, director of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. "Part of the reason that there hasn't been a reform bill is that everybody is afraid of opening the debate," she said. "They're afraid of igniting their constituents, so nothing gets done." But the program, which involves 13 museums, isn't dedicated to crafting specific policies or proposals. Organizers say they'll let the public figure out how they want to talk about issues and museums will tailor events to their local communities in the coming months. The museums chose Immigration as a focus because it intersects with other topics and historically has been an issue the U.S. struggles with, Sevcenko said. For instance, the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Mich., which has one of the nation's largest Arab populations, will have classes for college students and an exhibit called "Connecting Communities" in which recent immigrants tell their stories. The Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle has an exhibit called "Deporting Cambodians: How Immigration Policy Shapes Our Communities." The discussions and displays will not be focused solely on Immigration. For instance, in Chicago, a city with a rich labor history, events at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum will involve labor leaders. "It's impossible to talk about Immigration without talking about labor or health care," said Lisa Lee, director of the museum dedicated to the writer, social worker and first American woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize. "Before legislation, citizens have to be informed." Organizers of the program, called "Face to Face: Immigration Then and Now," say it's also important to let the public decide how they want to talk about the issue. On Wednesday in Chicago, about a dozen activists toured the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum and then talked about how to make social change, drawing largely on personal experience. Among those invited were hip hop advocates, gay activists and Bill Ayers, a University of Illinois at Chicago professor and 1960s radical whose past association with President Barack Obama created headlines during the campaign. "Immigration is one of these central issues in American life," Ayers told The Associated Press. "I think the way it is being framed is profoundly dishonest." While there is no reform bill currently before legislators, Obama has vowed to take up the issue this year. But many Immigration reform activists have been skeptical because details have been scant and other pressing issue, like health care, have been polarizing. Organizers of the museum program say when it comes to Immigration, they want to circumvent legislators' town hall meetings on health care, which often erupted into shouting matches. "We hope that we'll be able to prevent what happened with health care to happening with Immigration so people can grapple with the tough questions we're facing," Sevcenko said. "Reform will happen because people are able to look at this issue in a much more informed and measured way." Other participating museums include the Field Museum and Cambodian American Heritage Museum, both in Chicago; the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, N.C., the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and Ellis Island in New York; the Japanese American Museum in Los Angeles; the New Americans Museum in San Diego; Angel Island in San Francisco; the Tsongas Industrial History Center in Lowell, Mass.; and the University of Texas El Paso's Paso al Norte Immigration History Museum in El Paso, Texas. The museums are part of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, a network which has more than 200 members worldwide. ------ On the Web: International Coalition of Sites of Conscience: www.sitesofconscience.org/en Jane Addams Hull-House Museum: www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull
Tuesday, 14 July 2009
Museums, Diversity, and (Insert Culture Here): Appropriating Cultural Sensitivity Policy of the National Museum of the American Indian
This essay, by Christina Hardman, is the last in a series of essays written by the Texas Associaton of Museums scholarship recipients:
A well-designed collections management policy is important to the administration of a museum as a public trust on many different levels. Such policy creates a clear standard toward which the museum’s administration can look when dealing with everything from defining which collections are pertinent to the museum’s mission, to how to deal with acquisition, disposal, care, and display. However, a new appreciation for the meaning and significance of cultural patrimony has created a need for concern beyond the more traditional requirements of a collections management policy. Initially, these new concerns raised many questions for museums with collections of Native American origin. What responsibilities does the museum have toward the individual or group for which the object is an exceptional cultural resource? What additional responsibilities does the collections staff have toward the care and management of an object with respect to its cultural context? The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) has attempted to address such issues with regard to access and care of the collections, and the practice of cultural sensitivity policy within the museum as a whole. Yet such policy can also be viewed as a standard by which any museum can encourage diversity through cultural sensitivity as it relates to those represented within the museum, as well as the surrounding community.
That which differentiates NMAI’s policy is as much a reflection of the issues surrounding the state of Native American cultural patrimony as it is of the culturally sensitive items in the collection itself. Initially, one must consider the incidents leading up to the need for and creation of such policy, first and foremost being the systematic removal and collection of said objects from their cultural context. Many objects hold both a spiritual and mnemonic significance in terms of serving as both something to be revered and a way in which to remember significant events. The removal of the vast majority of those objects to private collections and museums has not only created historical interruption and cultural gaps in the conveyance of tradition, but it has forced indigenous cultures to look toward museums as the last bastion of their own cultural resources.[1] To a greater or lesser extent, depending upon geographical location, the same can be said of cultural resources collected as a result of both Jewish and African Diasporas, not to mention scores of cultural, religious, and minority groups. Although objects themselves may have different usage and meaning, historical and cultural interruption can affect any culture group in much the same way.
Consideration of the objects themselves in their original cultural context must also be addressed. According to W. Richard West, Jr., founding director of NMAI, the “object, if anything, was a secondary consideration to the primacy of the ceremonial ritual or process that led to its creation.”[2] Therefore, any object taken out of its cultural context and categorized in Anglo-American and Western European terms must be once again examined with regard to indigenous meaning. By its own mission, NMAI attempts to do exactly that by encouraging the “understanding of Native cultures…through partnership with Native people and others.” (The mission statement in its entirety can be found here: http://www.nmai.si.edu/subpage.cfm?subpage=about) Once a museum has recognized the need for diversity within its exhibitions, programming, and collections, the same considerations may be made for those specific groups within the surrounding community or those represented within the museum. Within this framework, almost any community or culture may be substituted for the term “Native” and the same concepts applied in terms of consultation, collaboration, and cooperation with the specified group.
As is also evident by their mission statement, the foundation of thought behind NMAI as an institution is based on the idea that while it is a “museum” with objects and is a producer of exhibitions, collaboration must occur between the museum and Native peoples. This collaboration requires the incorporation of methods that integrate Native understandings of history and culture.[3] This includes consideration for Native religious and cultural beliefs with restrictions on access to culturally sensitive objects.[4] Native traditional care is based on the object’s spiritual meaning and its use within the community, rather than the object itself. As a middle ground, standard museum and Native practices regarding care integrate and change the relationship between the two. [5] In this same manner, collaboration can and must be a priority for museums at large. In much the same way that Native people have felt alienated from their own culture as it has been represented by museums in the past (and in some cases continues to be so, even today), many other groups, whether based on ethnicity, culture, or religious belief, are removed from the process of interpreting their own past. It is not enough to rely on history books for second-hand interpretation by an individual many times removed from the group or individual represented. It is the responsibility of the museum to reach out to the community at large and involve various groups in the interpretation of their own history and culture.
Many larger institutions with significant collections of Native American objects, such as the Denver Art Museum and the Arizona State Museum have had such policy in place for years (some even before the creations of NAGPRA, as in the case of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University). While such policies were originally created to address the challenges faced by Native American people and their representation and historic interpretation in museums, they may also be applied in a broader scope to address such issues related to many different culture groups. Although the policy is no longer completely unique to NMAI in its recognition of the cultures that created the objects and their vested interest in the care and use of the collections, it has been both accepted and rejected by the professional museum community at large and has fueled a public debate that continues even now. The future creation of such policy in the larger professional museum community, and its acceptance by those who view museums from the perspective of public trustee, must develop out of knowledge of the various cultural groups, their beliefs, and an understanding of the need for cultural sensitivity in museums.
[1] Berlo, Janet Catherine, Ruth B. Phillips and Carol Duncan. “The Problematics of Collecting and Display, Part 1.” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 77, No. 1. (March 1995), pp. 9.
[2] West, W. Richard Jr., “The National Museum of the American Indian: Steward of the Sacred.” Stewards of the Sacred. Eds. Lawrence E. Sullivan and Alison Edwards, eds. Washington, D.C.; The American Association of Museums: 2004, pp. 8.
[3] Cobb, Amanda J. “The National Museum of the American Indian as Cultural Sovereignty.” American Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 2. (June 2005), pp. 493
[4] National Museum of the American Indian. Collections Management Policy. Smithsonian Institution, revised 28 April 1995, Item IV, Section E, Subsection 1, Paragraph (d).
[5] Cobb, pp. 493.
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Reflections on Diversity by an Emerging Museum Professional
Below is the reflective essay written by Aminatta Kamara, one of the scholarship recipients for the 2009 Texas Association of Museums Annual meeting.
Too often when the average person thinks of a museum professional, images of old men, as dusty as the objects they care for are conjured. However, as an emerging museum professional, I know that face is slowly changing. What began as an influx of women into an arguably male-dominated profession a couple of decades ago has evolved to include a number of other minorities. As a recipient of the Multicultural Initiatives Scholarship this year, I was asked to pen an essay discussing the topic of diversity in museum professions. I struggled with the topic as I feel that perhaps, just entering the museum world professionally, I do not have the right to critique. So instead, I have chosen to chronicle my feelings as they now stand.
As a minority, I would be remiss if I did not mention how disheartened I felt the first day I walked into graduate school orientation only to realize that I was one of two minorities enrolled in the Art History program. For the first time in my life, I wondered if my acceptance was based on my grades and accomplishments as I so hoped it was, or if it was steeped in the university’s needs to diversify their program. Early on, my cohort and I forged a relationship as comrades – it was “us” against “them.” I do not believe that either of us ever felt completely accepted - a fact we discussed ad nauseum along with the feelings of isolation and disassociation we felt as part of the system. Half-heartedly we joked about being “token” minorities and, viewing ourselves somewhat as mavericks bucking stereotypes and paving the way for other minorities, encouraged each other to change the face of art historians—all in the incredibly vintage year 2006.
The stereotypes persisted after college as I applied at and visited museums across the state. Thankfully, my first TAM meeting dispelled a number of myths that my graduate school friend and I formulated in the lesser used libraries of our hilly campus. In El Paso, I was excited to meet the new face of the museum professional. A face much more representative of a cross-section of cultures and decidedly more diverse than in the past; the new professional is increasingly a more cohesive blend of the multi-cultural society in which we all reside. Perhaps an awakening of sorts was required; one in which a younger generation realized that not only can one embrace their history, but that history may be studied and in time channeled into a profession. In my case, enlightenment occurred on the day I learned the different careers available at a museum – curator, director, conservator – they all sounded so exotic and interesting. I still remember the heady feeling I got when I came to the realization that I did not have to choose between my love for art and history and a professional career. I for one did not have to settle for a boring, everyday job, attempting to satiate my desire for culture and learning on clandestine lunch breaks from my cubicle or whirlwind weekend museum trips. I could work at a museum and do what I loved daily. Thankfully, no one told me otherwise.
I encourage those involved in museums to open your doors and bring in those who may never have otherwise stepped over the threshold. I challenge you to introduce yourself and your job at the next school field trip and answer the questions of that third grader—don’t just leave it to the docents. Perhaps among them will be born the next advocate for museums and preservation; ensuring that the doors of your institution will remain open for generations to come. And that is something we can all be proud of.
Friday, 19 June 2009
Juneteenth
It is especially important for Texas museums to acknowledge this historic day because it originated in Texas in 1865. It is now celebrated around the nation.
Here is a list of Juneteenth Celebrations around the country. If your museum has a Juneteenth event, it may be added to the list.
Happy Juneteenth everyone. Let's celebrate freedom and the great legacy that African American slaves and their descendants have given us.
Friday, 5 June 2009
Immigration Files to Become Part of National Archives
Hopefully, these files can help museums put a face on the many immigrants that have shaped our history!
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-archives4-2009jun04,0,2566475.story
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
Grant Opportunity for Educators!
Educators' Grant Program
APPLICATION DEADLINE: June 5, 2009
Do you have a creative educational project that needs funding? The American Immigration Law Foundation's Curriculum Center is here to help! In an effort to support teachers in engaging their students and communities in thoughtful dialogues centered on the issue of immigration and multiculturalism, the Center awards bi-annual grants for immigration-themed projects. While this school year is coming to a close, it's never too early to plan ahead for next year.
The next deadline for AILF's educators' grant is June 5, 2009 - only two weeks away!
ABOUT OUR GRANT PROGRAM
This year, the Foundation is extending the grant program to fund more "service-learning" oriented projects and invites extension educators as wells a community leaders who want to make an impact in their community to apply. Take a look at past grant winners from 2005 to present to get an idea of the kinds of projects we fund.
The Foundation is always looking for innovative and creative classroom ideas. Applications for immigration-themed projects will be considered for all subject areas, although special consideration will be given for proposals that relate to the following categories:
Innovative use of technology
Underrepresented minorities
Community outreach and partnerships with community-based organizations
Math and science
Applications are limited to educators, extension educators and community leaders. Proposals that are classroom-based will receive strong consideration and the Foundation encourages projects that can be replicated in other classrooms across the nation. Funds for field trips will NOT be granted and grants are non-renewable.
1. A completed application form.
2. An essay detailing the objectives of the proposed project, a timeline for the activity, a list of resources to be used and/or created, and an explanation of how the proposed project might be used by others. Also, please include at least one paragraph of autobiographical information, and tell us about any previous immigration-related curriculum activities you have conducted. 3. Proposed budget with estimated expenses. 4. Recommendation letter from principal on school letterhead.Send completed application packet to teachers@ailf.org.
Recipients will be selected by AILF's Curriculum Advisory Board and announced and disbursed in July and December 2009. Grants will be paid to the teacher submitting the proposal and teachers will have one year to complete their projects. A summary lesson plan and sample materials must be submitted in hard copy and electronically to AILF by that time, and become the property of AILF for use on the Foundation website and in print materials.
